The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Data measurements representing yields of crops harvested from agricultural fields are usually collected via a measurement process. The measurement process typically is a stochastic process that is prone to errors and generalizations. For example, the received data measurements may be incomplete or inaccurate. Errors may be introduced at all levels and the errors may often be unavoidable. For example, even if reports on yields of crops are generated based on reports obtained using a sophisticated survey process at the county level, the reports may still be missing critical data.
The survey process also may be inaccurate and may fail to take into consideration the fact that measurements of yields of crops harvested from one agricultural field may depend on crops harvested from the neighboring fields. Furthermore, the measurements may not reflect the fact that the crops harvested from one field may be influenced by the local microclimate and irrigation practices specific to that field, but not to other fields.